Safety fears prompt more Brooklyn youths to carry guns, report finds

More young people are carrying guns out of fear for their lives and for the safety of their families, according to a report released Monday.

The study from the Center for Justice Innovation was based on conversations with more than 100 residents of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, between the ages of 14 and 24. It came as counts of firearms in schools have reached double digits and a troubling surge in youth violence has taken the lives of multiple young people.

More than three in four of those interviewed reported having been shot or shot at and missed, researchers found. The young people with firearms overwhelmingly had friends or family who were victims of gun violence — 89%.

“My biggest fear is somebody coming for me and they can’t get to me, they try to get to my family,” said a 19-year-old boy whose name was withheld so he could speak freely about his situation.

Roughly 14% of those arrested for shootings so far this year were younger than 18, police data show, and 10% of the city’s shooting victims were under 18. On Monday afternoon, a 15-year-old boy was shot in the back and critically wounded in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, cops said.

For the study, field-workers set up in a vacant garden behind a shop in Crown Heights, a neighborhood with the sixth-highest number of shootings in the city.

The young people interviewed were predominantly Black and spanned the main gangs in the neighborhood, including the Bloods, Crips and Gangster Disciples. More than half had been incarcerated, and the average age of their first arrest was 15.

“In poor Black communities, young people rarely have spaces where they feel safe … enough to speak honestly about why they carry and use guns,” said Basaime Spate, one of the study’s authors. “Doing this work and allowing participants to share their unfiltered voice is vital to finding real solutions to reducing gun violence.”

Three-quarters of those interviewed said they carry guns because they fear dying, while 72% feared someone harming their families, researchers found. They described mostly being fearful of two groups: police and “opps,” including rival gang members or other competitors outside the mainstream economy — like in drug dealing and scams to make ends meet.

The NYPD did not return a request for comment.

The figures tie into a citywide trend: Nearly one in five New Yorkers polled by the Siena College Research Institute reported buying a gun for personal protection in the past year, recent data show.

The young people also described social media as a factor because they do not want to appear weak when challenged online. The majority of participants reported watching violent videos weekly or more often, with nearly two-thirds seeing such videos daily.

“It’s just basically regular people dissing my side, and we’re dissing their side. But they do it more on the internet, and that gets us mad,” said a 17-year-old boy. “We just got to do what we’ve got to do.”

The report called for new programs that build on the informal referrals to services and basic resources that already exist in some neighborhoods. That could include working with the heads of local gangs and street networks — and hiring them as staff when appropriate — because they are believed to be uniquely able to intervene.

Recommendations also included expanding job programs specifically for young people with criminal records. Only 8% of the interviewees reported being employed full-time, and 14% part-time.

“I feel like if there was more opportunities to make money than the streets,” said one of the young people, “other than selling drugs and stuff like that, then … people wouldn’t resort to beefing with each other.”